Portland

Did you know that Innotech is this week? This is a great local conference that draws people from the whole region with some fantastic world-class speakers. Sean Lowery has done another amazing job lining up speakers and building out several new tracks. Highlights include:

• eMarketing Summit: Two full days of Online Marketing presentations focused on “How To” & real-world business to business scenarios.
• NW CIO Summit: An exclusive Special Event @ InnoTech, the NW CIO Summit is open only to executive level IT professionals.
• Open Source Summit: A full day of dedicated Open Source presentations - Open to All Attendees
• Clean Technology Track: A full day of Clean Tech presentations, on Wednesday, 4/16, presented by SAO’s Clean Tech Forum
• Non Profit Technology Summit: The Non Profit Technology Summit features seminars specifically focused on technology issues of nonprofits.

I hope to see you there. I’ll be presenting at the Open Source Summit for the ‘Open in Oregon Lightning Talks’ and the CIO Beta Summit Demo. Amazingly these are at the exact same time so that should be interesting; you’ll get to see me in a dead sprint between session rooms. :-)

You should really make time to attend this event; its a fantastic place to network and catch up with all of the latest things happening in Portland and the Northwest. If you’re around make sure to Twitter about it and let’s connect!

Through snow, sleet, hail, rain and of course a fair mix of sun yesterday’s Startupalooza was a fantastic success. Organized by Todd Kenefsky with a whole host of volunteers and the rest of the Legion of Tech pitching in as well it was a great event and I got a chance to put a lot of faces with (mostly Twitter) names.

Highlights for me included:

• Hearing the Jive Software story (complete with embarrassing photos)
• Meeting Matt King and Jason Glaspey (the Unthirsty guys)
• Seeing @ahockley totally decked out with a lot of photo gear I wish I had
• Buying drinks/food for folks at the Side Door afterwords thinking the bill was huge only to have it be $360
• Realizing that Garage Games is actually a ginormous endeavor
• Getting to meet the Toonlet guys
• Realizing that gamers and people with connections to NYC seem to do well in Portland

And, as is the case at any event in Portland, there were the seedlings hatched for new events. One was an impromptu idea that Paul Biggs (aka @techpaulogy) had called #drunkgeeking. Say you’re married, with an SO, etc and they have gotten tired of your inebriated ramblings about technology. Wouldn’t it make sense to find a couple of other nerds you could get your drink on with and then talk about geeky topics? Instead of trying to organize it on a regular basis, why not just use Twitter + the hashtag #drunkgeeking to coordinate on-the-fly events. For example, you could couple this with Unthirsty and find a good happy hour, Tweet “#drunkgeeking in 15 minutes at the Side Door” and see what happens. I love it and am looking forward to it after Paul gets done with his three day pantless bender. :-)

While at Startupalooza, Matt King demoed a new application he’s working on for a few folks that were there. Its in the Alpha stage but he wanted to get the take of some folks that could take a hard look while drilling down into the actual details of the application. This could be really handy for folks if we formalized it. Pick someone’s office, an afternoon and choose 2 or 3 applications to critique. To participate you have to have something you’d want looked at in the coming weeks/months. You’d want high quality participation and it would be great to have a mix of devs, designers and (*gasp*) even a marketer or two … :-)

All in all I was amazed at the vibrance of the Portland startup scene … clearly there is something here, clearly we’re just starting to pick up the pace here … I can’t imagine anywhere else on earth I’d rather be working and living.

Go ahead. Just try and describe the great city of Portland in a word. I dare ya. I double dog dare ya.

Here’s the problem; you just can’t do it. Its impossible.

I’ve been working with a few folks on pulseofpdx.com and one of the things I wanted to do was whip up a t-shirt (how can you not have a t-shirt for an as-yet-completed website?!) that would help get people fired up at the next Ignite Portland. I figured a few words on the back, maybe 4 or so, in big, bold letters and then on the front something like “Follow the pulseofpdx.com”. (Bear in mind I’m open to suggestions on this). Where else would I turn for the pulse then to Twitter? Here is what I found (newest first):

	voiceofra : @kveton liberal neohippies are more PDXer terms << (2008-01-15 20:08:02)
	Zolotkey : @kveton Diversity is what PDX in one word could be. :) << (2008-01-15 19:26:56)
	RobHayes : @kveton microbeer, gore tex, quadrant-ed, slow food, self-evangelizing, voodoo doughnuts << (2008-01-15 19:15:49)
	aziari : @kveton my contribution to add to the mix: progressive. eclectic. sustainable. << (2008-01-15 19:09:13)
	JefftheGreat : @kveton: silicon forest, liquid sunshine, non-californians, Idaho’s Portugel, flanel, tree, ducks, subaru, medical mary jane, liberal, etc << (2008-01-15 19:07:26)
	bryce : @kveton webfeet? << (2008-01-15 19:05:17)
	slyness : @kveton keep it simple, ‘local geek culture’ is enough. what if nongeeks in pdx what to be part of the pulse. local tweet culture? << (2008-01-15 18:59:10)
	jabancroft : @kveton Not all Portland geeks are tree hugging greenies. Just be careful with that brush you’re painting with. ;-) << (2008-01-15 18:58:36)
	Seeger : @kveton open source, bike-friendly, fleece-and-gortex fashion, left-leaning, latte-swilling… Looking forward to drinks Thursday! << (2008-01-15 18:55:37)
	sparkwatson : @kveton DIY? Grass Rootsy? << (2008-01-15 18:54:20)
	Zolotkey : @kveton independent << (2008-01-15 17:26:36)
	metafluence : @kveton pioneers << (2008-01-15 17:26:11)
	spinnerin : @kveton I like ‘hippie geek’ to describe Portland, personally. << (2008-01-15 16:59:24)
	sarahgilbert : @kveton: community. definitely not ‘weird,’ because the whole ‘keep pdx weird’ thing originated in austin, which makes it seem like cheating << (2008-01-15 16:38:08)
	cookingupastory : @kveton idk if one word can do it. bliss? pdx has it all. << (2008-01-15 16:35:26)
	windley : @kveton wet << (2008-01-15 16:31:54)
	samnagle : @kveton organic, green, autonomous, natural, Innovative, Original. I guess that wasn’t one word. << (2008-01-15 16:30:29)
	slyness : @kveton “local geek culture” could be Twitter LGC or just the fact that three words are better than four. kick that hippy to the floor. << (2008-01-15 16:12:40)
	JefftheGreat : @kveton drop the word “hippy” << (2008-01-15 16:12:12)
	slyness : @kveton pdx’ers are weird not hippy. << (2008-01-15 16:10:29)
	mtrichardson : @kveton @samnagle or maybe just ‘portland geeks’ - doesn’t portland connate hippie well enough already? << (2008-01-15 16:02:05)
	sarahgilbert : @kveton: ‘local free-range geek culture’? << (2008-01-15 16:01:44)
	slyness : @kveton drop the word hippy << (2008-01-15 16:01:37)
	samnagle : @kveton maybe just “hippy geek” << (2008-01-15 16:01:00)

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Okay, so if you’re still reading … wow … bravo to you. That’s a lot of dialog. Here’s the thing … I can’t figure out 4 words that describe Portland. I can find 4 words that do it for me (if you’re playing a long from home they are “local hippie geek culture”) but what about everybody else?! Not everybody wants ‘ducks’ or ‘hippie’ or even ‘geek’ for their 4 words. Darn it. What then is the Pulse of Portland?! Well, that’s easy. Its something different for everybody. That’s what makes Portland such the independent, free-range, local, hippie, geek, culture, art, eclectic, progressive, sustainable, silicon forest, liquid sunshine, non-californians, Idaho’s Portugel, flanel, tree, ducks, subaru, medical mary jane, liberal, microbeer, gore tex, quadrant-ed, roasted, distilled, brewed, slow food, self-evangelizing, voodoo doughnuts, webfeet, wet, organic, green, autonomous, natural, innovative, original and blissful place that it is.

The solution? Look for a feature on the site in the near future that lets you choose-your-own-adventure when it comes to your Pulse of PDX t-shirt. Your color of shirt. Your 4 words. All of it the Pulse of PDX. As my father-in-law is known for saying: we have the technology.

Man I love this city.

Chris Messina is literally a factory of ideas. He’s one of the most selfless people I’ve ever met. He also possesses the only reality distortion field I’ve ever seen that actually stays with you when he’s not around. Hats off to you Chris; the selfless viral reality distortion field guy that’s doing amazing things every single day. Now put him together with his partner-in-crime, the original Pinko marketeer, Tara Hunt you’ve got a recipe for some amazing things. (full-disclosure: I’m an adviser to their company Citizen Agency).

Originally uploaded by spinnerin.

One of my favorite of their creations is the concept of co-working. The idea is simple:

Coworking is cafe-like community/collaboration space for developers, writers and independents.

Or, it’s like this: start with a shared office and add cafe culture. Which is the opposite of most modern cafes.

I had a chance to visit the Citizen Space a couple of weeks ago and I was amazed. Its an open space with desks, white boards and a conference room. Its shared by multiple companies. The cross-pollination possibilities are endless. In an age when we spend more and more time on-line, its amazing what having some face time does to the creative process. While there, I attended the Citizen Summit which was joined by 25 really, really sharp people with amazing ideas and strong convictions.

A couple of weeks ago at the Portland BarCamp planning meeting there was quite a bit of discussion about co-working in Portland. Dawn and Raven are leading the charge and I’d really love to see something like this take off. With the eclectic culture and big batch of 30-somethings in Portland, co-working would be ideal. We know for a fact that there are lots of self-employed hackers living in Portland as well as lots of people who work for big companies from all over the globe but choose to live in Portland. I can see co-working spaces in NE, SE, the Pearl, etc. I can see events at each of these every week that help seed the next businesses, the next ventures. Connecting smart people and doing amazing things is just a few mouse clicks away.

The other really amazing thing about these co-working spaces is that they could lead to a federation of spaces across the globe. Imagine being able to travel anywhere in the world and find like-minded technocrats such as yourself and quickly and easily engage with them. Mix in a free desk for visitors (or a nominal fee) with wi-fi and you’re set.

If you’re interested in learning more, head over to the Co-working Portland wiki and sign-up, join in and make it happen!

I’m not sure who nominated me (thank you nameless and faceless, whoever you are), but I was selected by Red Herring for their annual “25 under 35″ review of up-and-coming entrepreneurs (to this day it takes a spell checker for me to spell that word - so much for being one).

I was mildly amused by the cover (there has to be an inside joke on the lollipop action - can’t wait to hear it). I was much-more-than-mildly amused when I saw over at Valleywag they had nominated the cover as one of the top 3 most embarrassing covers of 2006. The results proved that it was the least embarrassing of the most embarrassing. I mean how do you beat Arrington burning a bunch of Benjamin’s to light his cigar?! Priceless.

BTW - It took me a good four days to find a copy here in Portland, OR. The irony is that my mother had found two copies at a Barnes & Noble. Apparently they were the only two copies in the Portland-Metro area. So I snuck over to my folks house and swiped a copy … thanks Mom! Hahaha! :-)

So I’m really delighted and honored. Thanks so much Red Herring.

So I’ve got that going for me. Which is nice. (name that pop-culture reference, win an autographed copy of Red Herring magazine!! Note: you’ll need to provide your own copy as supplies are limited here in the Portland-area.)

Update: The full-story can be found here.

I had dinner with a good friend the other night and we started out at the Backstage which is a bar run by the McMenamin’s brothers. I can’t describe the coolness factor of this place. 80 foot ceilings?! Are you kidding me?! The McMenamin’s turn everything they touch to gold.

Stepping out into the blustery night air, we were greeted with Hawthorne Blvd in all of its night-time glory. Lined with shops, cafes, bars and restaurants its an extremely vibrant neighborhood. This must be an anomaly, right? But over to Belmont or further across town to the Pearl or NE to Sellwood to the South Waterfront its vibrant. No strip malls, no chain stores. Local, local, local. And the food is good. The beer is amazing. The spirits warm your belly. And we even make our own fuel here. What’s the story with this place?!

Portland Skyline

Originally uploaded by Infinite Wilderness.

Portland, OR has seen an influx of 25-35 year olds that is really changing the landscape of the city. Portland is an extremely livable city. Its affordable. The climate is mild (that’s an Oregonian’s way of saying ‘at least its only rain and not 4 months of snow’). Its beautiful (see insert). Its close to the ocean and the mountains. And its got *life*.

Its this livable environment that has attracted a large cadre of open source developers who choose to live locally and develop globally. There are all kinds of linux kernel hackers here. The Open Source Lab and the OSDL are here. IBM has a bunch of open source developers here. Intel. Informix. Ruby developers. Perl hackers. Python guys/gals. You name it, we’ve got a little bit of everything. Out of this eco-system come some really amazing companies that are starting to do some cool things.

Within the US, the two cities I think could most easily be turned into new silicon valleys are Boulder and Portland.
- Paul Graham

Its not about building the next Silicon Valley. The trends we’re seeing in Portland are reflected in the businesses that are starting up here. Jive Software started things off when they moved here a few years ago from New York. They wanted something livable and they got it. Now they are 30+ people and growing strong. No longer a startup, these guys are 100% growth stage and poised to do some great things.

Platial is a great Web 2.0 company. Building your own personal atlas. Mashup city. Di-Ann’s company is firing on all pistons and they are doing something insanely cool. Enabling users to annotate their own maps and share them with the world.

Rael recently left O’Reilly Media to start his own company and they just launched their first product a couple of weeks ago. Stikkit is another Web 2.0 play that helps you organize your daily life and make it easy to share with your friends, family or co-workers. Again, another amazing product that is focused on doing “something good” for its users.

And I wouldn’t be my shameless self if I didn’t plug my company. We’re working on a single sign-on technology for the Internet called OpenID. Its simple. Its easy to use. Easy to setup. Most importantly, its decentralized. Anybody can use it and it empowers a whole new set of services to exist on the Internet. Extremely disruptive by putting the user at the center of the equation OpenID is about doing “the right thing” when it comes to digital identity.

Brian Jamison heads up a great local company called OpenSourcery. They are a consulting firm that helps companies, non-profits and schools take control of the applications they use. They do this with open source. Brian’s company is growing like gangbusters and are looking to have a great year in 2007.

Just this week I got wind of yet-another-startup. SplashCast is a media syndication service and just this week they picked up former TechCrunch writer Marshall Kirkpatrick to be the director of content. I’m expecting some great things out of these folks when they launch in January.

Almost every single one of these companies has an open source slant to them but its not core to the business. They use the tools and paradigms that have been enabled by open source to help build their businesses. Each and every one has a central theme of “doing the right thing” for the users and helping them do more than they ever could. Couple that with the Portland way-of-life and you’ve got a recipe for some amazing, amazing things to happen.

Watch out world; 2007 will be known as the year when Portland puts itself on the tech map for good.

I’ve had a lot of different projects, communities and people come to me and say “Hey, I want to learn more about OpenID and I’d really like some help on implementing it for my site.” Ask for and ye shall receive.

I’m excited to announce what I hope is the first of many Mash Pit: OpenID events. We really wanted to do an event that was more hacking than talks. We figured doing something like a MashPit was the best way to do that. We’ll have a good group of OpenID-savvy people here that day covering languages like PHP, Ruby, Python, Perl and others. Bring your laptop and yourself and we’ll help you OpenID enable your application, site or kitchen sink.

The first event will be 1/17/2006 at 4pm here in beautiful Portland, OR and hosted by JanRain (full-disclosure: these guys are awesome)*. More information can be found at the wiki or the Upcoming.org listing.

* - Super full-disclosure: I work at JanRain … :-)

Update: Tweaked links to move over to mashpit.pbwiki.com.